Microsoft Bans Halo 4 Pirates, and Some Idiots Absolutely Deserved It

http://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-bans-halo-4-pirates-and-some-idiots-absolutely-deserved-it-121015/

by anons2011 • 14 years ago

63 53 14 years ago

jrockway• 14 years ago

I'm surprised that torrentfreak would take this view. Perhaps Microsoft needs better internal controls if they don't want their games to leak a month before release? Once it's leaked, you can't really blame people for playing the game and telling people about it. Information wants to be free, and all that.

What purpose does account suspension serve? People will just initiate a chargeback for their membership fees and create a new account with a new username. Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.

SideburnsOfDoom• 14 years ago

> Once it's leaked, you can't really blame people for playing the game

According to the article, Microsoft can and did. And they're legally in the right, and probably have the moral high ground too.

> People will just ... create a new account

Accounts are full of things that people like to keep.

> Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.

Is it really worse to lose the problem users?

randall• 14 years ago

That would almost be a net win. Higher rev per console, for sure.

patrickk• 14 years ago

> Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.

Halo 4 won't be on the PS3. Halo is a Microsoft property. Part of the Xbox lock-in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(series)

Daniel_Newby• 14 years ago

> People will just initiate a chargeback for their membership fees and create a new account with a new username.

More than once for the same console? More than once for the same credit card number? Microsoft can make the ban pretty harsh if they want.

aes256• 14 years ago

Microsoft have a history of banning consoles, and once they're banned there is no way of getting them running on Live again.

Every now and then a big wave of console bans comes along and eBay is filled with people flogging their banned consoles.

onli• 14 years ago

"Rickrolling" people with plot-spoilers has nothing to do with "information wants to be free". That is what the article is targeting mainly. The other part, microsoft catching the mouse, is just to be expected on a closed system.

CKKim• 14 years ago

> What purpose does account suspension serve?

I'm usually tempted by this kind of thing but value my account too much to chance it. I think there are many wishy washys like me who could use another account/console to do piracy properly but aren't really into it at that level, just opportunistic if it's there and easy to do. A small penalty like banning is all that's really needed to deter us.

DanBC3• 14 years ago

Some high profile copyright-circumventers have a "don't pirate games" view. They've suggested people have two xbox360s; one cracked for homebrew and programming, and another for legit games online. They seemed to agree with MS and the mass ban of cracked boxes.

And there are a (admittedly small) number of people who only pirate things i) that are not available legit ii) as a try before buy, with deletion for content they don't want and purchase for content they do want.

TF usually has sane commentary. And their biases are open and upfront.

envex2• 14 years ago

If you've been banned your console is useless -- you can't make a new gold account anymore.

AUmrysh• 14 years ago

Your console is not useless. When you are permabanned they will mess up your NAND and make your saves invalid, and you won't be able to connect to live again without modifying the keyvault on your console (on ones where this is possible). They used to just ban your console and not your account, so you could keep your account and just go buy a new console, mod it, and be playing again within a week (after the ban wave was over).

A friend of mine actually figured out how much he was paying for the console every year, about $200-$300, and then figured out how many games he had pirated (at what would be $60, roughly, a piece) and came to the conclusion that it was worth pirating all of his Xbox 360 games and face being banned every November. If you own 5 games that were purchased new, that's a console's worth of money right there. We did that for a couple of years until they started banning our accounts for the JTAG exploit.

Microsoft is unethical in what they do when they ban people on Live and corrupt their NAND, but they've probably got legal powers to do that based on the Live EULA.

anonaccount275• 14 years ago

Microsoft has Account and Console bans, and it has variations therein; there can be a total console ban that extends to all of the accounts on it as well, there can be temporary console bans, full eeprom ban, etc. as well as simple account bans.

It's also unfortunately not a perfect system. On the original Xbox, there was an autoban trigger for an inordinate amount of negative feedback on an account. It made for some interesting retaliations when you utterly destroyed someone and their friends in a game.

nthj• 14 years ago

> Once it's leaked, you can't really blame people for playing the game and telling people about it.

As a fan who has followed the Halo series for more than a decade, I can certainly blame somebody for spoiling the ending. Especially if they're spitefully tricking people into accidentally reading the ending, not just having discussions in threads marked SPOILER.

Seriously, if The Empire Strikes Back had been leaked back in the day and trolls were running around Hacker News saying "VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER!" wouldn't you be annoyed?

> Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.

That would be a win for Microsoft. "Hey, Sony, we're sending you some of our customers, for free! They're free because they don't pay for games. Hehehe have fun, much love, Bill"

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

That's a bit of a problem with the internet , it's very difficult not to trip over spoilers.

This is especially true here in the UK for US TV shows, since in many cases there is at least a year between airing in the US and the UK.

xibernetik• 14 years ago

I'm going to diverge a moment here as say that it's incredibly difficult to prevent big budget software from leaking. When you have hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals involved in the process, some of which who inevitably just won't care about the franchise or value "internet" cred more than keeping the game a secret, you're in a hard place. Putting more internal controls in can drastically slow things down and get in people's ways, and it can build ire when people feel like they're being treated like irresponsible children instead of employees. Then once you start gearing up CD production... You've introduced thousands of underpaid laborers who probably don't really care about your franchise.

Back on point, you can absolutely blame people for playing the game and then maliciously attempting to spoil the ending for others. Pirating is not a passive action. Some people believe information wants to be free, but since my pay is dependent on information/software as currency, I'm not about to subscribe to that ideology. Since I like the products that have come about from people willing to pay for information, I'm not going to evade paying the creators.

tekknik• 14 years ago

Why is this news? They've had this policy since Halo 2. The only reason Halo 1 didn't have it was because it wasn't a live game.

DanBC3• 14 years ago

Hello,

Welcome to HN!

(apologies in advance for the patronising tone. I really need help and advice about tone in written communication. Sorry.)

In general it's a bad idea to say "Why is this news" because that adds little to the conversation. You will attract down votes for comments like that.

In general it's considered poor form to say that an item doesn't belong on HN. Alternatives are to use the voting system; use the flag system; or just ignore the bad content. You don't have access to down votes yet, and top level items don't have down vote buttons anyway, but you do have up vote rights. It's great when many people visit [new] and up vote good content.

This is a shame because you probably have a good point.

From the Welcome page:

> A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.

>What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it could be.

>The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

This article wants to be objecting to the mass-posting of Halo 4 spoilers, but for some reason it's written with an almost anti-piracy angle. This confuses me.

nchlswu• 14 years ago

I see it written as against the pirates who "give a bad name to pirates" so to speak.

Karunamon2• 14 years ago

This might come as a surprise to a lot of people (namely those of you who seem shocked that torrentfreak is cheering on Microsoft), but just because someone is generally anti copyright does not mean that they don't have soft spots for certain companies or certain franchises, or that they rank spoiling a blockbuster as a pretty crappy thing to do.

simba-hiiipower4• 14 years ago

i'd say it’s less-so 'cheering on' or having a soft spot for them, but rather, they seem to have an understanding that, like it or not, copyright holders do have a right to enforce their property, and that not to expect otherwise is idiotic (especially when their enforcement is brought-down via denying access to services they provide).

and while i agree that its surprising given the source, they do seem to take a pretty pragmatic view on the issue. i mean we’re not talking about a record industry suing a 13-year-old girl for sharing a few mp3s here.. to have done this you would have had to seriously modify your console and probably violated nearly every line in the service’s terms of use in the process. xbox live is a service after all and they’re under no obligation to continue offering it to those who egregiously abuse it.

rsynnott• 14 years ago

Funny how standards differ, really; there'd be a lot of eyebrows raised if Apple or Google (or Microsoft, on their mobile platform) started denying use of their network services to jailbroken/rooted users.

DannyBee• 14 years ago

The real news here is that Halo 4 apparently has a story worth ruining?

jug6ernaut2• 14 years ago

The Halo series actually has a large and very immersing universe surrounding its games. There is also a successful novels series follow/extending the Halo Universe. The notion that Halo 4 might have a bad story should be more a shock then it having a good story. Ofc this is all up to opinion, but the novel's extensive success should speak for themselves.

nitid_name• 14 years ago

Anytime I'm flying, if I can't find an interesting book in the book store, I buy a cheap piece of easy to read entertainment. More often than not, it ends up being one of the extended Halo universe books. They're short enough they can be finished in a flight and the lore is genuinely interesting.

... the writing is garbage, but hey, it's pulp fiction.

blktiger• 14 years ago

While I enjoy the novels, I think the story embedded in the game speaks for itself. Check out the massive story page on the halo.bungie.org website, there are pages and pages and pages of speculations from avid fans about this or that in the story. http://halostory.bungie.org/

lostlogin• 14 years ago

I was gutted when Bungie was bought by MS. It was the end of the Marathon series which was a killer Mac game. Story, puzzle, action (that grenade launcher, dual shotguns...). I have never played Halo, but if it carried on anything like the experience Marathon had I really should.

nahname• 14 years ago

A YouTube mini-serious was created to drum up interest in Halo 4. Check it out to get some idea of the story planned for the next game, either that or it is to provide back story. In any case, I feel it is really well done and surprisingly interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJVgXBfSH8

anonaccount275• 14 years ago

So do they distinguish between pirated copies and honestly-bought copies, and ban appropriately, or do they take the blanket approach of banning anyone playing the game regardless?

mindstab• 14 years ago

seeing as it's 3 weeks before launch I don't think there are any honestly-bought copies which means its blanket ban approach and it works perfectly. Which is why it's hilarious

anonaccount275• 14 years ago

I've seen several pictures of opened copies (could be fake, sure), and Halo 2 was shipped to retailers several weeks before release (but that was a long time ago and their policies may have changed in that regard) and had a similar problem to this.

IIRC they banned people who tried to play on Live, but not people who were signed in but playing singleplayer. At least, that seemed to be the policy.

rprasad• 14 years ago

As the game has not yet been released to customers, to retail, or to reviewers, anyone currently playing the release-version is probably using a pirated copy. Thus, they are probably using the blanket approach, excluding the accounts of known reviewers.

anonaccount275• 14 years ago

Tons of stores sell games early. Though I guess that anyone getting banned who have a legitimate but early-sold copy would be directed to take it up with the retailer that broke the original release date, which makes sense.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

FYI this has absolutely nothing to do with TorrentFreak suddenly being anti-piracy. The only thing he's mad about is that the pirates are spoiling the game's story by publishing spoilers everywhere. It's not about the act of piracy itself, just the spoilers.

From Enigmax in the comments:

"The issue of the "copying and distributing" of information isn't what i'm complaining about, it's the idiots who want to ruin everyone else's enjoyment of what would otherwise be a first class experience."

mikeryan• 14 years ago

"The issue of the "copying and distributing" of information isn't what i'm complaining about

Strange, it seems like the distribution of information is exactly what he's complaining about.

anonaccount275• 14 years ago

Game plot spoilers is equally valid (as distributable information) as the bits on the disc itself.

jonny_eh2• 14 years ago

There's a difference between making information available and making it unavoidable.

Crake• 14 years ago

With consoles linked to the home company so strongly these days, it's relatively unsurprising that Microsoft would do something like this. I mean, it's not like you don't know that your console's connected to them, right?

Microsoft Bans Halo 4 Pirates, and Some Idiots Absolutely Deserved It

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